
Class fiS435 

Book .^35 

Copyright N° 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT; 



THE 
WONDERFUL BOOK 



BY 



JOHN GAINES VAUGHAN 

AUTHOR OF 

" Gem Cyclopaedia of Illustrations;" 



; Parkton's Social Problem;" 

" Oriental Wanderings." 



BOSTON : 

XTbc CuBbman pvese, 

1906. 



.Vss 



i Ywo Copies Received 

NOV 27 (90? 

Sopyrignt fcntnr 

CUSM ^Xc. No.! 

COPY 8« 



Copyright, 1906, 

by 

John Gaines Vauohan. 



Uo /IDs TOUife 

wf\o has always been neat, industrious, 

economical, thoughtful, studious, 

helpful and loving, 

this brochure is affectionately dedicated. 

Tlje ftuthjor. 



INTRODUCTION. 



This brochure contains the substance of a series of Sabbath 
evening addresses on THE WONDERFUL BOOK. 

It seems to the author that such a condensation of essential 
facts, as he has here attempted, is needed as a Vade OAecum 
for the busy man, for he is sure to meet the statements of men 
who assume superior wisdom and who brush away, as with a 
breath, traditions he has regarded as sacred. Many of these 
men are the soul of urbanity and exhibit profound sympathy for 
the ignorance of people who disagree with them. 

The writer has heard them advance theories and state, what 
they called, facts that were diametrically opposed (when carried 
to their logical conclusion) to the fundamental principles of Chris- 
tianity. They professed faith in Christianity, and held to the 
inspiration of the Bible, but advanced theories that undermined 
the one and denied the other. They are in the habit of making 
such affirmations as, "All scholars hold these views." "You 
will agree with me when you understand ail the facts." 

These critics are not all dishonest, neither do they mean to do 
violence to God's Word. Some of them have embarked in the 
nutshell of a word and started back to explore the past. They 
have become so absorbed in their little world as to lose sight of 
great historic monuments along the way. When a person confines 
himself to one line of thought so constantly that he fails to appre- 



INTRODUCTION 

ciate related truth, he is likely to deny the reality of things he 
does not understand. 

Some people are so constituted that they have great reverence 
for the scholarly recluse f who rides his philological hobby back 
to the conclusion that Homer never lived ; that Moses and Christ 
were not real, and that Joshua and Joseph were only astral myths. 
Others who are just as honest and intelligent object when 
these hobbyists want the whole road» and are not slow to say that 
philology in such instances has run mad. 

Common honest folk who have read the recently discovered 
Code of Hammurabi and know something of the history of that 
great ruler, cannot be led to believe that the fourteenth chapter 
of Genesis is mythical. 

All students of human progress know that history centers 
around personalities. It would be utterly impossible for history 
to center around a mythical Moses. A real Moses is as neces- 
sary to Hebrew history as Washington is to American history or 
Napoleon to French history. The critics against whom we in- 
veigh approach the Bible and Christianity as friends but talk as 
enemies. They tell us they believe the Bible and accept Jesus 
Christ as the Saviour of men, and then proceed to tell us the 
Pentateuch was written only five or six centuries before Christ, 
and consequently not by Moses. They do not see that if the last 
statement be true the Pentateuch is a forgery, and has been 
palmed off on a credulous people by scoundrels. If the Penta- 
teuch is a forgery Christ and his apostles knew it and lied when 
they quoted from it or were ignorant- " If Christ lied he was 
not divine and if he was divine he did not lie, and was not igno- 
rant." The unfortunate result of the discussion has been a 
weakening of the faith of some who were not able to give an 
answer to those who asked a reason for the hope within I Peter, 
3. 15. 



INTRODUCTION 

This condition has spread throughout the church a partial spirit- 
ual paralysis. 

Since writing the above, a friend told me of a young man in a 
Theological Seminary whose faith was so shaken, he wept over 
his Bible, then threw it away, saying, " I have come to believe it 
is all a He." He left the school and the church. 

The ranks of the destructive critics are thinning, one stronghold 
after another is fading away in the light oi thorough investigation. 
THE WONDERFUL BOOK seems more wonderful than ever as 
it relates, " The Old, Old Story of Jesus and his love." 

Syracuse, N. Y. May i, 1906. J. G. V. 



THE WONDERFUL BOOK. 



i. 

THE word " Bible" is from "Biblos and means "Book." The 
Protestant Bible comprises sixty-six canonical books, of 
which twenty-two are historical, five poetical, 
Sixty-Six eighteen prophetical, and twenty-one epistolatory. 
Books These were written in three languages, at intervals 

during a period of sixteen hundred years, by no less 
than thirty-six different writers of every grade of culture, and 
moving in various spheres of life: "Two kings, one cup-bearer, 
one lawyer, one judge, one scribe, and many prophets, one of 
whom was a king's chief minister, another a missionary, and a 
third a farmer's son, two fishermen, a tent-maker, a publican, a 
physician and others." 

One cannot read carefully this marvellous book without 
being impressed that its perfect unity and harmony, notwith- 
standing its great variety, argue strongly for its 
Wonderful divinity. Such unity and purpose of plan could 
Harmony not exist without collusion among the writers or a 
controlling superintending mind. If the reader 
should receive today by express from some distant city a piece of 
machinery, and on the morrow receive from a different place 



8 THE WONDERFUL BOOK 

another piece, and this process should be repeated for sixty-six 
days, each day bringing a piece from a different place, and he 
should find on examination that the pieces fit together harmon- 
iously, and make a perfect machine, not a piece too many and 
not a piece wanting, he would naturally and inevitably conclude 
that the persons who had made the pieces worked intelligently 
to the same end, or that there was a superintending mind who 
planned for the unity out of variety. It is not possible that the 
writers of the Bible were in collusion, for they lived in different 
ages and in widely separated regions, between which there was 
little or no communication, and wrote in different languages. 
We are, therefore, forced to the conclusion that there was a con- 
trolling superintending mind and that, "Holy men of God spake 
as they were moved by the Holy Ghost," when they wrote the 
book we call the Bible. 

Simple and unavoidable as this conclusion seems to be, it 
has been ably contested and has led to much fiery criticism, 

which has proved a great blessing to the christian 
Fiery world. It is true it has been a destructive fire that 

Criticism had burned up much tradition, superstition and 

bibliolatry which had fastened themselves to the 
Sacred Record, as barnacles to a ship. The destructive fire 
which once swept over the Pyrenees and destroyed the vineyards 
of the peasantry, left them as they supposed very poor, but as 
some of them walked amid the desolation they observed that the 
heat had opened fissures in the earth, and it was by means of 
these that they discovered the rich veins of gold beneath the 
surface. Instead of the fire making them poor, it revealed to 
them the fact they were rich. The fiery criticism to which the 
Bible has been subjected has not destroyed anything that had 



THE WONDERFUL BOOK 9 

real value, but it has revealed a vast amount of gold beneath 
the surface. 

The Bible is growing in public favor, is overcoming opposi- 
tion and being recognized by the best scholars as in harmony 
with the most advanced science. If the Bible isthe 
The Bible Word of God this process must go on till every 
and Science obstacle gives away, for there can be no contradic- 
tion between the revelations of God as written 
in the Bible and in Nature. It is true the Bible was not given to 
teach science — but salvation, yet it is equally true that the 
incidental references to science must not contradict facts. It is 
well for us to bear in mind that while Scientia, as used by the 
ancients meant knowledge, that many theories which were 
regarded as scientific a quarter of a century ago are no longer 
entertained by scholars. We can afford to stay close to the Bible 
in full confidence, that when the scientists have made their last 
deliverance they will rest upon God's Word as a foundation. 

It must have been a designing Providence that put the revel- 
ation of God into languages that soon became i( dead " and were 

not therefore subject to change ; that caused the 
Dead people and the countries described in the sacred 

Language narrative to drop out of the onward march of the 

nations and to remain until the present time prac- 
tically unchanged in topography, customs and civilization : that 
turned during the past century an army of explorers to these 
neglected lands, who, by means of pickax and spade, have ex- 
humed buried cities, enabling us to walk their streets, visit the 
homes, study the customs and talk with the people who repre- 



io THE WONDERFUL BOOK 

sented civilizations that grew old and died long before the birth 
of the Christian era, thus bringing within reach of everyone 
indubitable evidence that the Bible deals with fact and not with 
fancy. We are living in an age when the stones are literally 
crying out as predicted by Christ, Luke XIX, 40. When we are 
thoughtful and attentive we can hear their voices above the 
tumult, testifying to God's creative power, and inviting us to 
trace his footprints back through the ages of time, till we stand 
at the beginning of the demiurgic day and hear God's voice 
saying "Let there be light. " Persons who have no inclination 
to follow the explorers through Egypt, Babylon and Nineveh 
may take a leisurely walk with Dr. Stowe along the corridors 
of history and hear him rehearse the testimony of one hundred 
witnesses, who lived within two centuries of the crucifixion of 
Christ, to the truth and inspiration of the Bible. 

We are well aware that the Bible did not fall ready-made 
from heaven, but that it has been written, collated and preserved 

by means of human agency. Our inquiry into its 
The Old origin and present form shall be as reverent as it is 
Testament critical. The first reference to an attempt at pre- 
Canon serving God's law or statutes, is found in Deut 31, 

26. whe'e it is said : 'The book of the law was 
placed by Moses in the side of the ark. 'The canon of Scripture 
just as we have it was in general circulation as early as the fourth 
century of the Christian era. The first attempt at arranging 
a canon seems to have been made by Ezra about 450 B. C. The 
second attempt was made by Nehemiah when he was forming a 
library for, "he gathered together the Acts of the Kings, and the 
Prophets, and the Psalms of David, and the Epistles of the Kings 



THE WONDERFUL BOOK n 

concerning the holy gift.'' 2 Mace. 2, 13. Sometime during the 
next 150 years the old Testament canon, just as we have it today, 
was generally accepted, though the 39 books were so grouped 
as to accord with the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet. The 
twelve Minor Prophets counting as one, Ruth being coupled with 
Judges, Ezra with Nehemiah, Lamentations with Jeremiah, 
while first and second Samuel, first and second Kings and first 
and second Chronicles were reckoned as one each. 

Josephus, Origen, Jerome and others speak of the Old 
Testament canon as containing the twenty-two books referred to. 
Hilary mentions that, the Hebrews had twenty-two canonical 
books of the Old Testament, corresponding to the twenty-two 
letters in their alphabet : but as the Greeks have twenty-four 
letters in their alphabet, they ought to have twenty-four books 
in their Old Testament canon : and he, therefore, in order to 
make out the number twenty-four, would add to the Hebrew 
canon the books of Tobit and Judith for the Greek Bible. 

The attitude of Christ and the apostles towards the books of 
the Old Testament is very suggestive and significant. Every 
writer of the New Testament refers to the Old 
Christ and Testament and nearly every writer of the Old 
the Old Testament is quoted in the New Testament. Two 

Testament hundred and nine (209) of the two hundred and 
sixty (260) Chapters into which the New Testament 
is divided, refer by direct quotation or indirect reference to the 
Old Testament. Christ endorsed the Old Testament by refer- 
ring to or quoting from twenty-four (24) of the thirty-nine (39) 
books. He made the Old Testament the basis of his teaching, 
fulfilled its laws and accepted its history. 

Just when and by whom the books of the New Testament 



is THE WONDERFUL BOOK 

were collected and arranged is not definitely known. Some 

scholars claim the work was done mainly by St- 
The New John. It was certainly accomplished early in the 
Testament Christian era for the council of Laodicea (364 A. D.) 
Canon adopted the canon just as we have it in the Revised 

Version of the New Testament. Tischendorf has 
said, " By what logicians call the method of rejection it is shown 
successively that the Gospels which were admitted as canonical 
in the fourth century could not have been written so late as the 
third century after Christ. Then, in the same way, the testi- 
mony of the third century carries us up to the second, then the 
writers again, of the second century not only refer to the Gospels 
as commonly received as parts of the Sacred Scripture, but also 
refer their origin to a date not later than the end of the first 
century/' 

So far as we know, Christ never penned a line, nor com- 
manded his followers to do so, but soon after his ascension the 

disciples began to record his words in the Gospels. 
Christ The claims of Christianity rest on the person of 

Wrote Christ and it is not strange that the battles of the 

Nothing Christian Church have been fought around Christ. 

If the claims of Christ be overthrown Christianity 
must surrender. We must frankly admit that we have no other 
source of information, with respect to the life of Jesus, than the 
sacred writings. We have no choice,— we must stand for the 
integrity of the Gospels or surrender the battle against infidelity. 
Christ, himself, appealed to the Scriptures to vindicate his claim. 
Jno. 5, 39. In the course of time the Acts and the Epistles 
naturally followed the Gospels. These were usually written by 
a scribe or rapid writer at the dictation of the author. It seems 



THE WONDERFUL BOOK 13 

that most of Paul's Epistles were produced in this way, but in 
some instances he speaks of having written apart with his own 
hand, Philemon 19. Where the writer did not do the writing 
himself he no doubt corrected as we do now. before he gave it 
his final approval and signature. The manuscripts have come 
to us through human hands and this fact has led some to write 
and talk learnedly of the errancy of the Scriptures, while many 
have hesitated to assert that they are inerrant It is our privi- 
lege to meet the facts boldly and intelligently and then draw our 
own conclusion. 

The material on which the books were originally written was 
probably papyrus, a frail kind of paper made from the reeds of 

the Nile. After a time more durable parchment 
Papyrus came into use, made from the skins of antelopes 
and and calves. The custom was to wind the sheets, 

Parchment of both papyrus and parchment, on sticks and call 

them rolls, but later they were stitched together and 
called books. While none of the original manuscripts remain 
we are sure we have the Scripture as first written, as we shall 
see. "The Old Testament manuscripts and the New Testa- 
ment manuscripts were intrusted to the guardianship of a class 
religiously set apart for the purpose. The text was sacred to 
them all. During the ages while the Jews were persecuted and 
downtrodden, they were guarding these manuscripts. 

All copies were made under their direction, and with a most 

marvellous devotion to the letter. Strict rules were 
Copying enjoined upon them. There had to be on each 

parchment so many columns, and so many lines in 
each column, and so many words in each line. The ink had to 
be of a certain kind. The vowels, consonants, and accents had 



14 THE WONDERFUL BOOK 

to be marked. So careful were they that the one hundredth 
copy was as good as the original manuscript. We have hundreds 
of manuscripts of the Old Testament and hundreds of manu- 
scripts of the New Testament. When we compare these 
manuscripts, some earlier, some later, copied by different copyists, 
we find substantial agreement. 

The differences amount to nothing. At a literary party in 
Edinburgh the question was asked: " Suppose all the New 
Testaments in the world had been destroyed at the 
Early end of the third century, could their contents have 
Writers been discovered from the writings of the first three 
centuries?" No one could answer- Lord Hailes, who 
was present, on going home, took down from his library the 
writings of those centuries and set to work to cull out all the 
quotations from the New Testament. He kept at the work for 
two months, and at the end of that time he had gathered from 
them the whole New Testament with the exception of eleven 
verses. Although we do not have the original manuscripts, yet 
in many ways we do know that we have the words of the 
original. It is probably a good thing that the original manu- 
scripts were lost or destroyed. Such is the tendency of man 
to worship such things, that if they were in existence they 
would be objects of idolatry. So would the Bible, as we now 
haveit, if itcontained no marks of man's imperfect work upon it." 

u It is often difficult, indeed impossible, to determine the date 
and nationality of a codex, but it seems certain that none of the 
manuscripts we now have are really very old. The 
The Age oldest authentic date is A. D. 916 for a codex of 
of rianu- the prophets, and A. D. 1009 for an entire Hebrew 
scripts Bible. Both of these are in the Imperial Library 
at St. Petersburg. 



THE WONDERFUL BOOK 15 

" The text of the Old Testament is in a very different con- 
dition from that of the New Testament. The latter is to be 
obtained from a great variety of documentary 
Massorah sources, manuscripts, versions, and patristic quo- 
tations, the collection and the arrangement of which 
have gradually grown into the science of textual criticism. In 
all classic literature there is nothing which may even distantly be 
compared in richness with the textual sources of the New Testa- 
ment. The case is far otherwise with the Old Testament, for no 
such wealth of resources for ascertaining the original form of 
the Hebrew is known to exist. The main reliance of the critic 
and expositor is upon the Massorah, the technical name given to 
a collection of grammatico-critical notes on the Hebrew text with 
the design of determining its divisions, grammatical forms, 
letters, vowel-marks and accents. The Massorah was the work 
of many centuries. The old Rabbins were inclined to attribute 
it to Ezra and the men of the Great Synagogue, but the more 
usual opinion assigns its commencement to the schools that 
were established at Tiberias and Babylon and elsewhere in the 
second century of our era. It existed only in the form of oral 
tradition until some period between the sixth century and the 
ninth century when it was committed to writing. It first took 
the shape of marginal notes on the copies of the sacred books. 
These gradually expanded into a very minute and comprehensive 
system. A full record of these annotations and glosses was 
given in the "Great Massorah" which appeared about the 
eleventh century, and is so called to distinguish it from another 
collection of notes, known as the " Small Massorah. " While 
much that is contained in the Massorah is nothing but laborious 
trifling, yet quite apart from this there is much that is of very 



16 THE WONDERFUL BOOK 

great use to the critical student. The authors have sometimes 
been charged with corrupting the sacred text, but for this there 
seems to be no solid foundation. They do not appear to have 
introduced anything of their own, but rather to have made a 
careful distinction between what they found in the manuscripts, 
and what they proposed to substitute. They have thus pre- 
served to us much traditional information of the highest value. 
There ought to be no doubt that we inherited from the Mas- 
soretes, and they from the Talmudists the sacred text trans- 
mitted by Ezra through the sacred seal of the Jewish canon." 

The history of the early Latin Version of the Bible is lost in 
obscurity. It was evidently made in North Africa where the 

church seems to have used the Latin language from 
Early the introduction of Christianity. Tertullian recog- 

Latin nized the general accuracy of the Version which he 

Version possessed. But Augustine deprecated the fact that 

in the early ages of Christianity anyone who gained 
possession of a Greek manuscript, and fancied he had a fair 
knowledge of the language ventured to translate it. There was 
unquestionably a popular version of the Bible in the Latin lang- 
uage current in North Africa in the latter part of the second 
century. It was a revision of this version making it correspond 
more nearly to the Greek that was called the Itala, and which 
Jerome compared carefully with the originals in making his 
translation. 



THE WONDERFUL BOOK X7 



II. 

THE VULGATE. 



The session of the council of Trent, held in the spring of the 
year 1546, discussed the canon and had before it four prop- 
ositions regarding the books to be received as 
Council follows: — Some proposed the books be separated 
of Trent into two divisions, in the first of which should 
stand the books that had always been regarded as 
canonical, and in the second division the books about which there 
had been more or less of doubt. A second proposition was that 
the books be arranged in three divisions, the first to contain the 
books which from the beginning had been received without con- 
tradiction ; second, the books which had at first been doubted, 
but had finally been received by the church ; third, the books 
which had not been received as canonical and did not appear in 
the Hebrew text. A third party in the council held that no dis- 
tinction should be made between the books. The fourth proposal 
was that all the books just as they stood in the Latin Bible be 
received as of equal divine authority. 

The debates on these propositions were very interesting. It 



18 THE WONDERFUL BOOK 

was affirmed that the Apocryphal books were never admitted by 
the Jews as a part of the Hebrew canon ; that they 
Apocryphal did not have the sanction of Christ and the apos- 
Books ties ; that they were not written till after the Old 

Testament canon was closed ; that they had been 
rejected by every preceding council and by the best of the church 
fathers ; that the books of themselves were unworthy a place 
in the sacred canon. It was admitted that the books contained 
much truth, but those who opposed their reception into the canon, 
quoted Jerome as saying, "They lack evidence of inspiration and 
should never be used to establish a doctrine." 

On March 8, 1546, the council decided by vote that church 

traditions should be held of equal value with the 
Church written Word of God. The decision was practically 
Traditions an endorsement of the Apocrypha, though the vote 

was not on that particular issue. On the fifteenth 
day of the same month a controversy arose as to the text that 
should be received. The most learned members of the council 
such as Cardinal Cajetan argued for the original Hebrew for the 
Old Testament, and the original Greek for the New Testament, 
claiming that the translators into Latin were liable to make mis- 
takes. He quoted Jerome as saying, "To prophesy and write 
holy books is the gift of God's Spirit, but to translate the books 
from one language to another is a matter of human skill." 
Cataneus declared the Latin translation could not be received as 
authentic without violating the canon where it is asserted that 
the truth of the Old Testament is to be sought in the Hebrew 
text, and that of the New Testament in the Greek text. Some 
of the members argued that to accept such a view would give 
strength to the Lutheran movement, and they must, therefore, 



THE WONDERFUL BOOK 19 

endorse the translation that had so long been used in the church 
and the schools. It was further asserted that it would weaken 
the authority of the church, and lead to heresies to give the 
people the right to translate the Scriptures for themselves. 
Isidore Clarus said: "Origen collected many Greek translations 
of the Old Testament into one large book, and arranged them 
side by side in six columns. The principal one was the septua- 
gint from which many translations have been made, and the 
New Testament has also been translated many times from Greek 
into Latin. " Of these translations the Itala found the most 
favor, but it was held to be subordinate to the Greek text. 
Jerome found so many mistakes in the Itala that he made his 
translation directly from the Hebrew and Greek in many places, 
though he was less familiar with these languages. Owing to 
the popularity of the Itala, Jerome's translation was slow in 
gaining recognition. The two translations were finally combined. 
The Apostolic See recognized both translations. The Psalms and 
the parts of the scriptures most familiar to the people, from their 
use in the public service, were retained as in the Itala, but for 
much the larger part of the Bible, Jerome's translation was 
adopted, and while he received none of the Apocryphal books 
save Judith and Tobit, they were admitted into the combination- 
edition known as the Vulgate. 

After able and protracted debates the council of Trent endorsed 
the Vulgate and declared it the authentic edition of the Word of 
God, and an anathema was pronounced upon all who 
Vulgate did not accept it. Thus the attidude of the Roman 
Accepted Catholic Church was for all time shut up to a re- 
ception of the Apocryphal books as inspired, and to 
the Vulgate translation of the Word of God. On the eighth day 



20 THE WONDERFUL BOOK 

of April the following decrees were passed by the council : " If 
anyone shall not receive these same books entire with all their 
parts, as they are wont to be read in the Catholic Church, and 
the Old Latin Vulgate edition, for sacred and canonical and shall 
knowingly and intentionally despise the traditions aforesaid let 
him be accursed. Moreover the Holy Synod decrees and de- 
clares that this same old Vulgate edition, which has stood the 
test of so many ages' use in the church, in public readings, dis- 
putings, preachings and expoundings, be decreed authentic and 
that no one on any pretext dare or presume to reject it." It was 
with great difficulty that the church enforced these decrees and 
made the reception of the Vulgate general. 

The versions used in the church of Rome have all been made 
from the Vulgate edition. The first version of tho New Testa- 
ment published in English by Roman Catholic 
Versions scholars was issued at Rheims in 1582. The title 
from page is as follows : " The New Testament of Jesus 

Vulgate Christ, translated faithfully into English out of the 
authorized Latin, according to the best corrected 
copies of the same, diligently conferred with theGreeke and other 
editions in diverse languages ; with arguments of books and 
chapters, annotations, and other necessary helps, for the better 
understanding of the text, and especially for the discovery of the 
corruptions of diverse late translations and for clearing the 
controversies in religion of these daies : In the English College 
of Rheims." This translation takes high Romanist ground, for 
it was made for the express purpose of combatting the influence 
of various English Bibles. The style of the translation is 
objectionable, some words are so Latinized as to render them 
almost unintelligible to the English reader. The prefaces and 
marginal notes and the annototions with which every chapter is 



THE WONDERFUL BOOK 21 

furnished are saturated with Romanistic doctrine, and abound 
with the teachings against which the Reformers contended. The 
object of the translation was to win England back to the fold of 
Rome. Here are a few specimens of the translations : " From 
that time Jesus began to preach and to say, ' Do penance for 
your sins for the kingdom of heaven is at hand." 

" Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after justice : for 
they shall have their fill." 

"Jesus began to do and to teach until he was assumpted." 

"Now then ye are not strangers and foreigners ; but you are 
citizens of the saints, and the domesticals of God." 

"To me the least of all the saints, is given this grace among 
the Gentiles to evangelize the unsearchable riches of Christ, and 
to illuminate all men which is the dispensation of the Sacrament 
hidden from the worlds in God who created all things : and that 
the manifold wisdom of God may be notified to the Princes and 
Potentates in the celestials by the Church according to the per- 
fection of the world, which he made in Christ Jesus our Lord." 

These translations remind us of the days of Freshman Latin, 
and we can hear the Professor say, "Well, you got in all the 
words, and you will now translate your English." Much of the 
English in the Rheimes Version needs translating. 

The note on Acts 1, 14 regarding "Marie, the mother of 
Jesus 5 ' is, 

" They buried her sacred body in Gethsemine, but for St. 
Thomas' sake, who desired to see and reverence it, they opened 
the sepulchre the third day, and finding it void of the holy body, 
but exceedingly fragrant, they returned, assuredly deeming that 
her body was assumpted into Heaven." 

At the end of the Acts is a minute and circumstantial but 
altogether baseless account of how and when the Apostles met 



22 THE WONDERFUL BOOK 

together and formulated what is known as the Apostles Creed. 
In 1609 the Douay Old Testament was printed. The reason for 
the Version is thus stated : "Now since Luther and his followers 
have pretended that the Roman Catholic faith and doctrine should 
be contrary to God's written word and that the Scriptures were 
not suffered in the Vulgar languages, lest the people should 
see the truth, and withal these new masters completely turning 
the Scriptures into diverse tongues, as best might serve their 
own opinions : against this false suggestion and practice Cath- 
olic pastors have, for one especial remedy, set forth sincere and 
true translations in most languages of the Latin Church. " They 
go on to state that they translate from the Latin rather than from 
the Hebrew or Greek text because, — "both the Hebrew and 
Greek editors are foully corrupted by the Jews and Heretics, since 
the Latin was truly translated out of them while they were more 
pure." 

The annotations and marginal references areas objectionable 
as in the New Testament. The translation is even worse than in 
the New Testament, especially the translation of the Psalms and 
the Prophetical books, for here we have an English translation 
of a Latin translation, of a Greek Version of the original Hebrew, 
which could not give very satisfactory results. Owing to the 
fact that the New Testament was translated and printed at 
Rheims and the Old Testament at Douay the Version is known 
as the Rheims-Douay. 

Bishop Challoner in 1750 issued a revised translation of the 
Rheimes-Douay Version. He abandoned the extreme literalness 
which marked the Version originally and modernized to some 
extent its archaic diction, bringing its expression into modern 
English. While his translation is not the authorized one it is 
preferred by many and is used quite extensively. 



THE WONDERFUL BOOK 23 



III. 

THE ENGLISH VERSIONS OF THE BIBLE. 



The history of the translation of the Bible into English, and 
its printing and circulation make a very interesting story. John 
Wycliffe and William Tindale deserve honored places among the 
men who accomplished this great work. Tindale affirmed that 
he had a burning desire to place the Bible "within the reach of 
every plow-boy." To accomplish this object he literally gave his 
life and died a martyr's death. 

WyclinVs great work was the translation of the Vulgate 
into English. His translation gradually superseded all other 
Versions and was recognized as the Roman Catholic Bible. 
This Version was circulated in manuscript form. The English 
was archaic and Latinized as shown by the following passage, 
Luke X, 30-34. " And Jhesu biheld, and seide: A man came 
down from Jerusalem into Jerico, and fel among theves, and thei 
robbiden hym and woundiden hym, and wente awai, and leften 
the man half alyve; And it bifel thai a prest came down the same 
weie, and passide forth, whanne he hadde seyn hym. Also a 
dekene when he was beside the place, and saw hym passide forth. 
But a Samaritan, goynge the weie, cam bisidie hym ; and he saw 
hym, and bound together his woundis, and helde in oyle and 



24 THE WONDERFUL BOOK 

wynne ; and laid hym on his beast, and ledde in to an ostrie, and 
dyd the cure of hym." " In 1526 Tindale's Testament was 
formally condemned by Warham, Archbishop of Canterbury, 
and Tunstal, Bishop of London." " In 1530 the condemnation 
was reaffirmed, but a 'Bill in English to be published by the 
preachers was issued stating that the King and prelates did not 
think it well for the Scriptures to be divulged and communicated 
to the people in the English tongue at this time." Almost 
immediately following this, a complete English Bible appeared 
which has been known as the Coverdale Bible. Where and by 
whom it was printed has never been ascertained. It was a fairly 
good translation and was widely circulated, but being a trans- 
lation of a translation it lacked the exactness of Tindale's Ver- 
sion. 

The Matthews' or John Rogers' Bible appeared in 1537. 
The text is a composite work made up of the translations of 
Tindale and Coverdale. Cromwell obtained a 
John license from Henry VIII. permitting the circulation 

Rogers' of this Bible. The people were eager for the Word, 
Bible but the opposition, from the priesthood, to its circu- 

lation was marked. All the men, with one excep- 
tion, who were prominently connected with the circulation of the 
first six editions of the English Bible suffered martyrdom. 

As it is not the province of this essay to discuss the merits 

of all the Versions we must pass such great works as the Geneva 

Bible, made by English refugees under the eyes of 

Geneva Beza and Calvin, which became the most popular 

Bible Version in English up to the time of the Authorized 

Version. 

Neither can we give space to the Bishops' Bible, the trans- 



THE WONDERFUL BOOK 25 

lation of which was superintended by Parker Archbishop of 

Canterbury, and begun about 1558. The work was 

Bishops' parceled out among various Bishops and supervised 

Bible by the Archbishop. The translators were governed 

by the following rules : 

1. Follow the common English translation (Cranmer's) used 
in the churches, save where it differs from the Hebrew and Greek 
original. 

2. Follow the text of Pagninus and Sebastian Munster. 

3. Make no bitter notes upon any text, or set down any 
determination in place of controversy. 

4. Mark ' 'places not edifying," so the reader may eschew them 
in his public reading. 

5. The phrases and words shall be common and plain." 
The convocation sanctioned the work and did all in its power to 
make it popular but failed, for it was very unsatisfactory and 
almost useless. 

Nearly all the early translations had such glaring errors as 
to give them nicknames. Tindale's Version is known as the 
"Luckie Bible," because of the following trans- 
Nicknames lation : " The Lord was with Joseph and he was a 
'Luckie fellow.' " Matthew's Bible is known as 
the "Ballade Bible," because Solomon's Song was entitled, 
"Solomon's Balades." The Coverdale Version is known as the 
"Treacle Bible," because Jer. 8, 22 is translated, "Is there no treacle 
in Gilead?" A translation that appeared in 1551 is known as the 
"Bug Bible," because Psalm 91 verse 5 is rendered, "Afraid of 
bugs by night." The Geneva Bible has been known as the 
"Breeches Bible," because Genesis 3, 7 is rendered, "Adam and 
Eve sewed fig leaves together and made themselves breeches," 



26 THE WONDERFUL BOOK 

Much the best version of the Scriptures prior to the Revised 
Version, is the one generally known as the " Authorized Version, " 
or the "King James Version.'' "No trace of 
Authorized such authorization has ever been found in any 
Version records of the times, whether civil or ecclesiast- 

ical. Neither the crown, nor the Parliament, nor 
the privy council, nor the convocation appear to have given it any 
public sanction. Yet without the aid of legal enactment, and 
entirely upon its own merits it quietly superseded all of its pre- 
decessors and rivals." 

" King James, at the Hampton Court Conference, in Jan- 
uary 1604 (from vanity and policy rather than from any higher 
motive) accepted the suggestion of Dr. Reynolds (President of 
Corpus Christi College, Oxford) relative to the making of a 
translation of the Scriptures to supersede the Geneva Bible, but 
he gave to the work no pecuniary aid and no sanction after it 
was finished. 

" The revisers (nominally fifty-four, but actually forty-seven 
in number) were divided into six companies, each being assigned 
a certain portion of the Scriptures, under the restriction of fifteen 
rigid rules, and met, two at Westminster, two at Oxford, and 
two at Cambridge. They recieved no compensation, and the 
necessary expenses were paid by the publisher, Robert Barker. 
The names of the translators have been forgotten but their work 
still lives and will never die. 

Dr. Scrivener has said : "Never was a great enterprise, like 
the production of our Authorized Version, carried out with less 
knowledge handed down to posterity of the laborers, their method 
and order of work." The work gathered up the ripe fruits of the 
previous labors of Tindale, Coverdale, Cranmer f the Bishops' 



THE WONDERFUL BOOK 27 

Bible, and the Rheims New Testament, but surpasses them all, 
and blends with singular fidelity, Saxon force and Latin melody. 
Its prose reads like poetry and sounds like music. " 

To glance briefly at the sources of the Authorized Version, 
and to make a study of its printed text, will be helpful at this 

point. The first book ever printed was the Bible, 
Sources but this was in the form of the Vulgate — a Latin 

edition of the Scriptures handsomely gotten up, and 
issued from the press at Mentz 1452. The first Hebrew Bible 
was printed under the auspices of some wealthy Jews, in 1488. 

On January 10, 1514 Cardinal Ximenes, primate or 
Ximenes Spain, completed a Polyglot Bible which included 

the Hebrew text of the Old Testament, and the 
Greek Septuagint Version, with the Chaldee Targum of Onkelos 
and the Latin Vulgate. The fifth volume of this great work con- 
tained the New Testament. The Cardinal died before the work 
was issued from the press, but on March 22, 1520, Leo X. author- 
ized its publication. " Thus came forth what is known as the 
Comptutensian edition of the New Testament; Complutum, being 
the Latin name for Alcala, where the work was prepared." 

" The present Hebrew text, as now found in the best editions 
of the Old Testament, is a reprint with few and slight exceptions, 
of the text edited by Jewish scholars and published by Bomberg, 
at Venice in 1525." 

While the great scholar Erasmus, was engaged upon literary 
work in England, he received a request from Froben, the eminent 

printer of Basle, to prepare for publication an edition 
Erasmus of the Greek New Testament. He gladly accepted 

the invitation, and completed the work within the 
short period of a few months — by Feb. 15 16. The first edition 



28 THE WONDERFUL BOOK 

was issued from the press by Aldus at Venice in 1518 ; a second 
edition, with many corrections, was issued in 1519; a third 
edition in 1522, which became famous as containing for the first 
time I John V. 7. 

Erasmus had not seen the Complutensian edition, which was 
issued in 1527. He was influenced in this work more or less by 
the great work of Cardinal Ximenes. The edition of 1527 was 
by far the most important of all the work done by Erasmus, for 
it became the basis of all subsequent texts until what is known 
as the " Received Text" was formed. 

The real successor of Erasmus was Robert Stephens, the 
famous Parisian printer, who issued two editions of the Greek 
text, one in 1546, and the other in 1549, in which he 
Robert availed himself of manuscripts in the Royal Library 
Stephens and of the Complutensian text. His most valuable 
work was a collection of texts issued in 1550, in 
which he gave 2,194 different readings, which he had collected 
from various manuscripts. He may be said to be the father of 
textual criticism. In 1551 he issued a fourth edition at Geneva, 
in which for the first time the text is divided into verses — an 
invention of Stephens. 

The next editor of the Greek New Testament was Beza, who 
published five editions, one in each of the following 
Beza years: 1565, 1576, 1582, 1589 and 1598, which were 

all based on the text of Stephens. 

This brings us to study the text from which the Authorized 
Version was made. It was commenced about 1604 when the 
above named Greek texts were in general circulation. Beza's 
edition of 1598, (which was based on Stephen's edition of 1550, 
which had been derived from the fourth edition of Erasmus 



THE WONDERFUL BOOK 29 

published in 1527) was usually followed in translating the 
Authorized Version. The first edition of Erasmus was not 
carefully prepared, but as he himself said ; "was 
Text of the rather tumbled headlong into the world than 
Authorized edited." He possessed but few manuscripts, and 
Version some of them of very inferior character. One 
was a cursive manuscript of the 14th or 15th cen- 
tury, another was a cursive of about the 12th century, which he 
seemed to have used but little, though it is regarded by critics as 
very valuable. In the Acts and the Epistles he followed a cursive 
manuscript of the 13th or 14th century with occasional references 
to one of the 15th century. For the Apocalypse he had only one 
mutilated manuscript. He supplied some passages from the 
Vulgate which he translated back again into Greek and in some 
places added words to complete the sense. In view of what has 
been said, we should not be surprised to find words, in the origi- 
nal, from which the Authorized Version was translated, that have 
on divine authority. It is true Erasmus availed himself of the 
Complutensian text, to some extent, in his later editions, but the 
manuscript authority on which it was based was modern and 
undue influence was accorded the Latin Vulgate. " In printing 
the Old Testament they gave the place of honor, in the center, 
to the Latin, surrounding it on either side by the Hebrew and 
Septuagint translation. On this they made the somewhat 
curious and suggestive remark, that the Latin thus placed was 
like Christ crucified between two thieves. The one thief was 
the Greek church which they regarded as heretical ; and the 
other was the nation of the Jews, who were charged with having 
corrupted the Hebrew text wherever it differed from the Latin. 
Stephens had but few if any advantages over Erasmus in the 



3d frHfc WONDERFUL BOOK 

manuscripts he possessed. Beza received from Stephens twenty - 
five manuscripts but made no critical use of them. Beza adhered 
very closely to Stephens, who followed with little variation the 
fifth edition of Erasmus. " Thus, then, stood the text of the 
Greek New Testament when the revisers of the Bishops' Bible 
set themselves to form from it our present Authorized English 
Version. Not one of the four most ancient manuscripts was then 
known to be in existence, and the whole Greek text had been 
based upon a very few modern manuscripts. The ancient ver- 
sions had not been examined. No careful investigation had been 
made into the testimony of the primitive text, borne by the 
Fathers. Textual criticism was still in its infancy, the materials 
for it had not been gathered, the principles of the science had not 
been studied, and the labors of Mill, Bentley, Griesbach, Lachman, 
Tischendorf , Tregelles, and other great scholars, to secure the 
purity of the text of the New Testament, were as yet unheard of 
and only to be put forth in the course of many future generations.' ' 
We should, therefore, not be surprised to find a vast multitude 
of changes in the Revised Version owing to amended texts. 
When we take into account the vast number of manuscripts and 
the difficulty of securing accuracy in the mechanical works, we 
are surprised that the changes are so few and unimportant. 

The various readings in the Hebrew text, according to the 
great Hebrew scholar, Elias Levita, number 848, but the even 

more eminent Hebraist, Gingsburg, claims to find 
Textual 1353. Owing to the large number of Hebrew 
Variations manuscripts, that have come to light in the past 

fifty years, scholars now claim to find between 
seven and eight thousand variants. These changes are mostly 



the Wonderful sook 31 

orthographical, and have no bearing on the sense of the original. 
The New Testament, which contains about one third as much 
matter as the Old Testament, has 150,000 textual variations, 
owing to the larger number of manuscripts, and less care used in 
copying, but the changes are as insignificant in the main as are 
the Hebrew variants. These different readings have sprung from 
pure mistakes, from words ending alike which misled copyists, 
verses omitted by ending like the preceding verse and thus causing 
copyist to make a mistake when glancing at the manuscript; 
marginal notes unintentionally incorporated in the text ; words 
added to complete the sense ; one passage to conform to another ; 
and in some places the change seems to be made to verify a 
doctrine. 

We must admit that the New Testament manuscripts were 
not guarded so carefully as were the manuscripts of the Old 
Testament. The former were often made in a 
Changes Scriptorium or copying house, where several scribes 
in New would take down from a common reader, and under 
Testaments such circumstances it would not be possible to 
prevent variations in spelling, arrangement of 
words, and sometimes in an added word. The text of Shakes- 
peare, less than three hundred years old, is far more uncertain 
and corrupt than the text of the New Testament, which is over 
eighteen centuries old, and yet has not twenty-five variants that 
seriously affect the meaning. In every one of Shakespeare's 
thirty-seven plays there are probably a hundred readings still 
disputed, a large portion of which seriously affect the passages in 
which they occur. 

In this connection we should remember that the New Testa- 



32 THE WONDERFUL BOOK 

ment existed for nearly fifteen hundred years only in manu- 
script form. One is surprised when he takes 
New into consideration, the Lumber and antiquity of 

Testament the New Testament manuscripts, that there are 
Manuscripts so few changes. Herodotus, the most ancient 
and in many respects the most important of the 
classic historians, lived about 450 B. C. Of his great work 
there are extant some fifteen manuscripts, most of them more 
recent than 1540 A.D. One belongs to the 12th century, one to 
the 10th and possibly one to the 9th. 

The manuscripts of Plato are not so numerous, neither are 
they so old. " We learn from the best authorities on the subject 
that no fewer than 1760 manuscripts of the New Testament in 
whole or in part, are known to scholars of our day." Many of 
these are mere fragments. There are about 1000 manuscript 
copies of the New Testament, and at least 50 of these are 1000 
years old. The oldest complete manuscript of the New Testa- 
ment dates back to within 200 years of the death of St. John. 
Prior to the tenth century the manuscripts were written in uncial 
or capital letters, and the words were not separated. The cursive, 
or running hand manuscripts, resemble the type in which Greek 
books are usually printed, and came into use after the tenth 
century. Comparatively few of the manuscripts contain the 
whole of the New Testament. Four hundred twenty-six (426) 
contain the Gospels, twenty-seven (27) being in unicals ; two 
hundred (200) contain the Acts and the Catholic epistles, eight 
(8) of which are uncials; ninety-one (91) give the complete 
Apocalypse or Revelation of which three (3) are uncials. So 
forty-seven (47) of these manuscripts are more than one thousand 
years old. 



THE WONDERFUL BOOK 33 

In comparing and contrasting the different versions of the 
Bible, to get at their respective merits, it is important that we 
remember the most ancient and consequently the most valuable 
manuscripts were not accessible to the persons who made the 
earlier translations of the Bible into English. 



34 THE WONDERFUL BOOK 



IV. 

FIVE GREAT CODICES. 



Fancy has woven into the history of the Christian church 
many traditions from which the historian must extract the truth. 
Without intending to be ruthless, let us remove from the realm 
of fancy one of the greatest men of antiquity, and see what we 
can learn of his relation to the Bible. 

In the year 271 A. D. Constantius Chlorus was at the head 
of the Roman armies, having carried the Roman Eagle success- 
fully through Gaul, Spain and Britain. After 
Constantino many successful conflicts he turned his legions, 
once more, toward Rome. The march homeward 
was for him one continued ovation. 

He and his staff paused at a country inn for refreshment. 
Helen, the innkeeper's daughter, did much to make their stay at 
the inn pleasant, and in so doing won the heart of 
Helen the victorious general who took her to be his wife. 

The next year there was born to them a son whom 
they named Constantine. Years brought promotion to Constan- 
tius Chlorus and he found himself at the head of the Roman 
Empire. The ladies and gentlemen who were in favor at court 



THE WONDERFUL BOOK 35 

told him that his country wife was not acceptable in their circle, 
so he put her away, and she and her son returned in disgrace to 
her former home in Dardania, Illyricum, where Christianity 
established by the apostles, still flourished. Helen became an 
earnest follower of the Saviour and taught her young son to 
reverence the Christian religion. Constantine had scarcely 
reached maturity in his obscure home, when the death angel 
paused at the Roman palace and summoned the spirit of Constan- 
tius Chlorus into the presence of God. The Roman Senate 
found it no easy matter to select a successor, for the claimants of 
the honor were numerous and the opposition was bitter. 

Finally a grave Senator arose and reminded them that there 
was no occasion for an election, for he remembered as some of 
them did, when a legitimate son and consequently the lawful 
successor to the throne had been sent into obscurity. Within 
one short month Constantine was placed at the head of the 
Roman Empire, and his mother brought from obscurity to occupy 
the position of the first woman of the land. 

The position of the young ruler was by no means an easy 
one, for Maxentius, an experienced warrior and bitter opponent, 
had gathered a large army in the North and was 
Haxentius marching toward Rome. Constantine with but 
little experience and an inferior army moved north- 
ward along the Flaminian Way, to meet him. During this 
march he says he saw the sign of the cross in the heavens, over 
which was the inscription " In hoc signo vinces." Whether it 
was a dream, imagination or revelation we will let others detei- 
mine, for it was overruled by God. The emperor promised the 
God of his Mother, that if he would give him victory, the 
Christian religion should be the religion of the Roman Empire, 



36 THE WONDERFUL BOOK 

The two armies met at the Melvian Bridge, where Maxentius 
found a disgraceful death in the waters of the Tiber, and Con- 
stantine returned in. triumph to Rome, and had the sign of the 
cross placed upon all the insignia of the Roman Empire, and 
Christianity became the state religion. He laid the wealth of 
the realm at his Mother's feet requesting her to go to Pales- 
tine, and build permanent monuments on the places made sacred 
by the birth, the death and the ascension of the Saviour. The 
work was done cheerfully and time testifies that it was done well. 

Constantine wrote to Eusebius of Caeserea, to have prepared 
for him, by the best workmen and of the best material, fifty 
copies of the entire Greek Scriptures ; and ordered 
Eusebius two Government wagons, under the especial care 
of the deacon of the Casserean church to transport 
these copies, when completed, to Constantinople for his own 
inspection. 

This commission Eusebius promptly and joyfully fulfilled. 
To this fact, undoubtedly, in a great degree, we are indebted 
for the remarkable accuracy of the Greek Testament, so much 
superior in this respect to the text of any Greek or Latin classic 
or even to our own Shakespeare or Milton. These manuscripts 
the Emperor gave to the principal churches to be read in the 
public worship, and they were transcribed for the use of other 
churches. To this source we probably owe all our best ancient 
manuscripts of the Greek Testament ; the Alexandrian, the 
Vatican, the Ephraim, the Bezse and the Sinaitic for all of them 
give evidence of Egyptian origin, and of being originally from 
the great book market of Alexandria. 

Codex Alexandras is so called because it had its origin in 



THE WONDERFUL BOOK 37 

Alexandria, Egypt, was sent to Charles I., King of England, in 

1628 by Cyrillus Lucaris, patriarch of Constanti- 
Codex A nople. This was kept in the King's library till 1753, 

when on the formation of the British Museum, it 
was transferred to that institution where it is still carefully 
preserved. It has on the back of the first leaf, a statement in 
Arabic, of a very ancient date, that the whole book was written 
by a noble Egyptian lady, who became a martyr, by the name of 
Thecla, about 325 A. D. The whole is written in a square and 
firm hand and looks as if it were the work of one person through- 
out. It is in four volumes, three for the Old Testament, in which 
is found the epistles of Clement to the Corinthians. The first 
twenty-four chapters of Matthew have been lost This is one 
of the most valuable manuscripts of the Greek Testament. The 
New Testament was published by Dr. Woide, in 1786 in uncial 
letters and in i860 by Mr. Cowper in cursive type. 

Codex Vaticanus is so called because it is kept in the Vatican 
library at Rome. It was one of the first treasures placed in the 

archives when the library was established by 
Codex B Nicholas V-, 1450 A. D. It is believed by the critics 

to be a quarter and possibly a half a century older 
than the Codex Alexandrius. It formerly contained the whole 
of the Greek Bible, but now the Epistles to Philemon, Titus, 
and the two to Timothy, and Hebrews and the Apocalypse are want 
ing. It is written on very fine vellum, in small elegant square 
letters. The letters are very much like those in the manuscript 
rolls discovered in the ruins of Herculaneum, one of the evidences 
of its great antiquity. The jealousy of the Papal Court has never 
allowed scholars the free use of this manuscript. In 1810 



38 THE WONDERFUL BOOK 

Napoleon took it to Paris with other Vatican treasures, and 
scholars had an opportunity to examine it for the first time. 
After the battle of Waterloo the treasure fell into the hands of 
the Duke of Wellington. Mr. Baber, the librarian of the 
British Museum, besought him, for the sake of Biblical science 
to put this invaluable manuscript where it might be accessible to 
scholars. "No," said Wellington, "it is stolen property and 
must go back to its owners." It went back to the Vatican 
where it is guarded so carefully that such great scholars as 
Tischendorf have been denied the privilege of carefully exam- 
ining it. In 1843 he was permitted to examine it for three hours 
on two consecutive days, but he was under strict surveillance 
and not permitted to copy a word. A similar privelege was 
granted to Edward de Muralt in 1844, and to Dr. Tregelles in 
1855. Of late years there has been a more liberal policy adopted 
and several reprints of the Vatican manuscript have appeared. 
Codex Ephrasmi, is so called from Ephraim the Syrian, a 
Mesopotamian saint of the age of Constantine. This is a very 

valuable manuscript and is as old as, or older than 
Codex C the Alexandrian. It originally contained the 

whole of the Greek Bible, written in a single column 
to a page, with forty to forty-five lines in a column, and from 
forty to forty-five letters in a line. Somewhere in the twelfth 
century this manuscript was taken to pieces, the letters so 
far as possible obliterated, and the leaves used for a copy 
of the Greek sermons of St. Ephraim. For this purpose 
the leaves were put together haphazard. These sermons 
formed a thin quarto volume, and the parchment on which they 
were written contained sixty-four leaves of the Greek Old Testa- 
ment, and one hundred forty-five of the New Testament: of 



THE WONDERFUL BOOK 39 

entire books of the New Testament only II John and II Thessal- 
onians are missing, and there are also wanting in the four Gospels 
about thirty-seven chapters, in the Acts ten, in the epistles 
forty-two, and in Revelations, eight. The volume was brought 
to France from Italy by Catherine de Medicis as the sermons of 
Ephraim, it not having been at that time discovered that the 
parchment originally was used for a copy of the Scriptures- 

This fact was first ascertained by Peter Allix about 1650 ; 
and in 1834 at the instance of the great scholar Fleck, a chemical 
was applied to the pages, which without putting Ephraim into 
the dark, made the evangelists and apostles somewhat visible." 
Manuscripts of this kind where one writing has been erased to 
make room for another, are called palimpsests, from two Greek 
words which signify to wipe again. Tischendorf became famous 
in connection with his labors in deciphering and publishing this 
manuscript. He issued the first edition in 1843. The original 
manuscript, in a very fragile state, is in the National Library at 
Paris. 

Codex Beza?, so called because it was presented to the library 
of the University of Cambridge in England by Theodore Beza 

in 1581 A. D. who obtained it in 1552 from the 
Codex D monastery of St. Irenseus, in Lyons. It contains 

only the historical books of the New Testament. 
A good reprint of it was published by Dr. Kipling, two volumes 
folio in 1793. Nothing is known of the early history of this 
manuscript, but scholars generally agree that it belongs to the 
latter part of the fifth century, and is probably a copy of some 
old Alexandrian manuscript. This manuscript is the most 
modern of the four mentioned, though it is evidently nearly 



40 THE WONDERFUL BOOK 

fifteen hundred years old, and is probably a reproduction of one 
of the manuscripts made by the direction of Constantine. 

Codex Sinaiticus, is so called because it was discovered at 
the convent of St Catherine on Mt. Sinai. As this is the most 
complete, the most ancient, and the most valuable 
Codex copy of the New Testament ever discovered, it will 

Sinaiticus be proper to speak briefly of its origin, discovery 
and place in the Revised Version. Scholars are 
almost a unit in affirming that this manuscript is doubtless one 
of the fifty copies prepared under the direction of the first Christ- 
ian Emperor. This manuscript inseparably connects the name 
of the great scholar Tischendorf with the recension of the Word 
of God which led to the Revised Bible. He says, " I resolved 
in 1839 to devote myself to the textual study of the New 
Testament, and attempt by making use of all the acquisitions of 
the last three centuries to reconstruct, if possible, the exact text 
as it came from the pen of the sacred writers.' ' 

To accomplish this object he studied the oldest manuscripts 
in the libraries of Europe, but found within himself a constantly 
growing desire to visit the monasteries of the East, and see if 
they did not contain some hitherto undiscovered treasures. To 
accomplish this result he met and overcame difficulties arising 
from poverty, indifference, and opposition, with a courage and 
perseverance that were truly sublime. He says : " It was at 
the foot of Mt. Sinai, in the convent of St. Catherine that I dis- 
covered the pearl of all my researches. In visiting the library 
of the monastery, in the month of May 1844, 1 perceived in the 
middle oi the great hall a large and wide basket full of old 
parchments, and the librarian who was a man of information, 



THE WONDERFUL BOOK 41 

told me that two heaps of papers like these, moulded by time, 
had been already committed to the flames. 

What was my surprise to find amid this heap of papers, a 
considerable number of sheets of a copy of the Old Testament 
in Greek which seemed to me to be one of the most ancient I 
had ever seen. 

The authorities of the convent allowed me to possess myself 
of a third of these parchments, or about forty-three sheets, all 
the more readily as they were destined for the fire. But I could 
not get them to yield up possession of the remainder. The too 
lively satisfaction which I had displayed had aroused their 
suspicion as to the value of this manuscript. I translated a 
page of the text ot Isaiah and Jeremiah, enjoined on the monks 
to take religious care of the remnants that might fall in their way. 
On my return to Saxony there were men of learning who at once 
appreciated the value of the treasure I had brought back with me. 
I did not divulge the name of the place where I had found it, in 
the hopes of returning and discovering the rest of the manuscript. 

I handed over to the Saxon government the Sinaitic frag- 
ments, to which I gave the name of Codex Frederick Augustus, 
in acknowledgement of the patronage given to me by the King 
of Saxony. 

I resolved to return to the East to copy the priceless manu- 
script whose fragments I so highly appreciated. In January, 
1853, 1 set out from Leipsic and embarked at Trieste for Egypt, 
and in the month of February I stood for the second time in the 
Convent of Sinai, but I was not able to discover any further 
trace of the treasure of 1844, and I returned to Europe and devoted 
myself to my literary work. In September, 1858, after many 
disappointments, I obtained the approval of the Emperor of 



42 THE WONDERFUL BOOK 

Russia, who supplied the funds for a third visit to the East for 
the purpose of Biblical research, and in the following January I 
again set sail, and by the last of the month I had reached the 
Convent of Sinai. The mission with which I was intrusted, 
entitled me to expect every consideration and attention. 

The prior in saluting me expressed a wish that I might 
succeed in discovering fresh supports for the truth. After 
having devoted a few days in turning over the manuscripts of 
the convent, not without alighting here and there on some 
precious parchment or other, I told my Bedouins, on Feb. 4th, to 
hold themselves in readiness to set out with their dromedaries 
for Cairo on the 7th, when an entirely fortuitous circumstance 
carried me at once to the goal of all my desires. On the after- 
noon of that day I was taking a walk with the steward of the 
convent in the neighborhood, and we returned toward sunset, 
and he begged me to take some refreshment with him in his cell. 
Scarcely had we entered the room, when, renewing our former 
subject of conversation he said: a And I, too, have read a 
Septuagint," and so saying took down from the corner of the 
room, a bulky kind of volume wrapped up in a red cloth and 
laid it before me. I unrolled the cover and discovered, to my 
great surprise, not only those very fragments which fifteen 
years before I had taken out of the basket, but also other parts 
of the Old Testament, the New Testament complete, and in 
addition, the Epistle of Barnabas and a part of the Pastor of 
Hermas. Full of joy, which this time I had the self-command to 
conceal from the steward and the rest of the community, I asked, 
as if in a careless way, for permission to take the manuscript 
into my sleeping chamber to look over it more at leisure. There 
by myself I could give way to the transport of joy which 1 felt. 



THE WONDERFUL BOOK 43 

I knew that I held in my hand the most precious Biblical treasury 
in existence — a document whose age and importance exceeded 
that of all the manuscripts which I had ever examined during 
twenty years study of the subject. I cannot now, I confess, 
recall the emotion which I felt in that exciting moment with such 
a diamond in my possession. Though my lamp was dim, and 
the night cold, I sat down at once to transcribe the Epistle of 
Barnabas. 

For two centuries search had been made in vain for the 
origirial Greek of the first part of the Epistle, which has only 
been known through a very faulty translation. And yet this 
letter, from the end of the second century, down to the 
beginning of the fourth century had an extensive author- 
ity, since many Christians assigned to it, and to the Pastor 
of Hermas a place side by side with the inspired writings of the 
New Testament. This was the very reason why these two 
writings were both thus bound up with the Sinaitic Bible, the 
transcription of which is to be referred to the first half of the 
fourth century, about the time of the first Christian Emperor. 
Early on the 5th of February I called upon the steward and asked 
permission to take the manuscript with me to Cairo, to have it 
transcribed completely from the beginning to end ; but the prior 
had set out two days before also for Cairo, on his way to Con- 
stantinople, to attend at the election of a new Archbishop, and 
one of the monks would not give his consent to my request. On 
the 7th at sunrise I took a hasty farewell of the monks, in hopes 
of reaching Cairo in time to get the prior's consent The follow- 
ing Sunday I reached Cairo, and the prior who had not yet set 
out gave his consent to my request, and also gave instruction to 
a Bedouin to go and fetch the manuscript with all speed. In 



44 THE WONDERFUL BOOK 

nine days he had made the journey to Sinai and return, and the 
priceless treasure was again in my hands. The time was now 
come at once boldly and without delay to set to a task of tran- 
scribing no less than one hundred and ten thousand lines, of 
which a great number were difficult to read, either on account of 
later corrections, or through the ink having faded, and that in a 
climate where the thermometer during March, April and May is 
never below 77 degrees of Farenheit in the shade. No one can 
say what this cost me in fatigue and exhaustion. I suggested 
to the monks the thought of presenting the original manuscript 
to the Emperor of Russia, as the natural protector of the Greek 
Orthodox faith. The proposal was favorably entertained, but 
an unexpected obstacle arose to prevent it being acted upon at 
once and caused me to make a trip to Constantinople and Jeru- 
salem in attempting to adjust the difficulty and get possession of 
the manuscript for the aforesaid purpose. Before the end of the 
year the right of the convent was recognized and Prince Lobanow 
requested me to get the precious manuscript and transfer it to 
St. Petersburg. On the 24th of September I returned to Cairo 
and on the following day I received from the archbishop and the 
monks, under the form of a loan the Sinaitic Bible, to carry it to 
St. Petersburg, and there to have it copied as accurately as pos- 
sible. I set out for Russia early in October, and on the 19th of 
November I presented to their Imperial Majesties, in the Winter 
Palace at Tsarkoe-Selo, the Sinaitic Bible." 

Many of the most learned men of Europe said they would 
rather have the honor of discovering the Sinaitic Bible, than the 
Koh-i-noor of the Queen of England, for it gives to the world 
the clearest light as to what is the real text of God's Word. 



THE WONDERFUL BOOK 45 

For two centuries scholars had been talking about the 
advisability of revising the Authorized Version, because of the 
light thrown on the text by the discovery of numerous ancient 
manuscripts, but the discovery of the Sinaitic Bible and the 
work done by Tischendorf changed the discussion into a wide- 
spread demand for such revision. All recognized the Authorized 
Version as the first English classic. ,€ Next to Christianity 
itself, the Version of 161 1 is the greatest boom which a kind 
Providence has bestowed upon the English race. It carries with 
it to the ends of the globe all that is truly valuable in our civiliza- 
tion, and gives strength, beauty and happiness to our domestic, 
social and national life. With all its excellencies it has innumer- 
able minor errors and defects. In the seventeenth century 
biblical philology, geography and archaeology were in their 
infancy, and comparative philology and textual criticism were 
not yet born. Biblical scholarship in recent years has made 
great progress. The Greek and Hebrew languages with all their 
cognates are better known now than ever before. The lands of 
the Bible have been made as familiar to scholars as their native 
country. Hence the growing demand for a conservative, yet 
thorough recension which culminated in our Revised Version." 



4 6 THE WONDERFUL BOOK 



REVISED VERSION AMERICAN 
STANDARD EDITION. 

The imperfections of the Authorized Version had been 
apparent to scholars for more than a century, and many attempts 
had been made to remedy them. Several of the 
Revision European countries notably Holland, Denmark, 
Needed Norway, Sweden and France had made attempts 
to amend the popular version of the Scriptures. The 
French Version was adopted by the British and Foreign Bible 
Society, and likewise by the American Bible Society, as the 
French Bible they would circulate. 

The mistakes in the Authorized Version were recognized by 
those who knew best and loved it most. God has not seen fit 
to provide the church, by a miracle, with infallible 
Ilistakes translators any more than with infallible transcribers, 
printers and readers. He desires a worship in spirit 
and in truth, and not an idolatry of the letter. It is not too much 
to say that the edition of 1611 had many typographical errors, 
such as "Judas" for " Jesus," Matt. 26, 36: "Serve thee" for 
"Serve me" Ex. 9, 13; "hoops" for "Hooks" ; "plaine" for 
Plague"; "Ye shall not eat," for "Ye shall eat." Many typo- 
graphical blunders crept into subsequent editions. A committee 
of the American Bible Society, in examining six editions of 



THE WONDERFUL BOOK 47 

the Authorized Version, discovered nearly 24,000 variations in 
the text and punctuation. About 1850 Archbishop Trench, Bishop 
Ellicott, Dean Alford, Dr. J. B. Lightfoot and others, took up 
the matter of revision seriously and earnestly. In 1870 the Upper 
House of the Canterbury Convocation, on motion of Bishop 
Wilberforce took the subject in hand and instituted the proceed- 
ings which finally secured the accomplishment of the work. Of 
all the religious bodies in Christendom this was the best fitted 
to set on foot a work of so much difficulty, delicacy and import- 
ance. The committee appointed by the Convocation, to which 
was intrusted the great work of Revision was widely chosen, 
and it is doubtful if it could have been improved. The British 
Old Testament committee was as follows *. The 

Bishop of St. David's, Chairman. 

Wm. A. Wright, Secretary. 

MEMBERS. 

Rev. Dr. Edward H. Broune, Bishop of Winchester. 

Rev. Dr. Arthur C. Hervey. 

Rev. Dr. Alfred Ollivant. 

Rev. Dr. Connop Thirwall, Bishop of Bath. 

Rev. Dr. Christopher Wordsworth, Bishop of Lincoln. 

Rev. Dr. John J. S. Perowne. 

Rev. Dr. Edward H. Plumptree. 

Rev. Dr. Robert P. Smith. 

Ven. Benjamin Harrison, Archdeacon of Maidstone. 

Ven. Henry J. Rose, Archdeacon of Bedford. 

Rev. Dr. William L. Alexander. 

Prof. Robert L. Bensley. 

Rev. John Birrell. 



48 THE WONDERFUL BOOK 

Frank Chance, M.D. 

Thomas Chenery, Esq., Educator, (said to have known the 

Hebrew Bible by heart.) 
Rev. Dr. Thomas K. Cheyne. 
Rev. Dr. Andrew B. Davidson. 
Rev. Dr. Benjamin Davies. 
Rev. Dr. George C M. Douglas. 
Prof. Samuel R. Driver. 
Rev. Charles J. Elliott, B.A. 
Rev. Dr. Patrick Fairbarn. 
Rev. Dr. Frederick Field. 
Rev. John D. Geden. 
Rev. Dr. Christian D. Ginsburg. 
Rev. Dr. Frederick W- Gotch. 
Rev. John Jebb. 
Rev. Dr. William Kay. 
Rev. Dr. Stanley Leathes. 
Rev. Joseph R. Lumby. 
Rev. Archibald H. Sayce. 
Rev. William Selwyn. 
Rev. Dr. William R. Smith. 
Prof. Wm. Wright, LL.D. 
Prof. Wm. A. Wright LL.D 

The British New Testament committee was as follows: 
Dr. J. Angus. 
Dr. E. H. Bickerstesh. 
Dr. J- W. Blakesley. 
Dr. D. Brown. 
Dr. C. J. Ellicott. 



THE WONDERFUL BOOK 49 

Dr. F. J. A. Hort 
Rev. W. G. Humphrey. 
Dr. B. H. Kennedy. 
Archdeacon W- Lee. 
Bishop J. B. Lightfoot. 
Prof. W- Milligan. 
Dr. W- F. Moulton. 
Principal S. Newth- 
Archdeacon E. Palmer. 
Prof. A. Roberts. 
Prof. R. Scott. 

Prebendary F. H. A- Scrivener. 
Dr. G. V. Smith. 
Dr. A. P. Stanley, 
Archbishop C Trence. 
Rev. J. Troutbeck. 
Dr. C. J. Vaughan. 
Canon B. F. Westcott. 
Bishop C Wordsworth. 

These men were the foremost scholars of their day. The 
educational movements of Great Britain can not be understood 
without giving them a large place. This committee was expressly 
authorized to " Invite the co-operation of any eminent for 
scholarship, to whatever nation or religious body they might 
belong," to assist in the work of Revision. In August, 1870, 
Rev. Dr. Joseph Angus arrived in New York, with a letter from 
Bishop Ellicott, chairman of the New Testament company, 
authorizing him to open negotiations for the formation of an 
American committee on Revision. Rev. Dr. Angus asked the 



50 THE WONDERFUL BOOK 

Rev. Dr. Philip Schaff to suggest the names of the Biblical 
scholars who would best represent the different denominations. 
The suggestions were submitted to the British committee and 
after considerable correspondence the following persons were 
named as the American Committee : -— 

OLD TESTAMENT COMPANY. 

Rev. Dr. Thomas J. Conant 
Rev. Dr. George E. Day. 
Rev. Dr. John DeWitt. 
Rev. Dr. William H. Green. 
Rev. Dr. George E. Hare. 
Rev. Dr. Charles P. Krauth. 
Rev. Dr. Joseph Packard. 
Rev. Dr. Calvin E. Stowe* 
Rev. Dr. James Strong. 
Rev. Dr. Charles A. Aiken. 
Rev. Dr. Talbott W. Chambers, 
Rev. Dr. Charles M. Mead. 
Prof. Howard Osgood. 
Dr. C. A. VanDyke. 
Dr. Tayler Lewis. 

NEW TESTAMENT COMPANY. 

Rev. Dr. Alfred Lee. 
Rev. Dr. Ezra Abbott. 
Rev. Dr. George R. Crooks. 
Rev. Dr. H. B. Hackett. 
Rev. Dr. James Hadley. 



THE WONDERFUL BOOK 51 

Rev. Dr. Charles Hodge. 
Rev. Dr. A. C Kendrick. 
Rev. Dr. Matthew B. Riddle. 
Rev. Dr. Charles Short. 
Rev. Dr. Henry B. Smith. 
Rev, Dr. Henry J. Thayer. 
Rev. Dr. W- F- Warren. 
Rev. Dr. Edward A- Washburn. 
Rev. Dr. Theodore D. Woolsey. 
Rev. Dr. Philip Schaff. 
Rev. Dr. I. K. Burr. 
Chancellor H. Crosby. 
Prof. Timothy Dwight. 

The American committee did not organize and begin work 
till 1872. Rev. Dr. Wm. H. Green was elected chairman of the 
Old Testament committee, and Rev. Dr. Theodore D. Woolsey, 
chairman of the New Testament committee. The English and 
American Committees were in constant correspondence and the 
co-operation was perfect from the beginning* The rules agreed 
upon by the committees were eminently wise and were as follows : 

1. To introduce as few alterations as possible, 
Committee into the text of the Authorized Version consistent 
Rules with fairness. 

2. To limit, as far as possible, the expressions 
of such alterations to the language of the Authorized Version and 
earlier English Versions. 

3. That each company go twice over the portion to be revised, 
once provisionally, and the second time finally. 

4. That the text to be adopted be that for which the evidence is 
decidedly predominating ; and that when the text so adopted 



52 THE WONDERFUL BOOK 

differs from that from which the Authorized Version was made, 

the alterations be indicated in the margin. 

5. To make or retain no change in the text on the second final 

revision by each company, except two-thirds of those present 

approve the same, but on the first revision to decide by simple 

majorities. 

To complete the work required fifteen years; the method 
pursued was this:— ''The English company made a first re- 
vision of a given portion, which was printed and sent to the 
American company, who, after taking time for study and con- 
sultation, transmitted their criticisms. Thereupon a second 
revision was made in England, printed copies of which were as 
before, sent across the sea, and the revisers in America trans- 
mitted such criticisms as occurred to them. After due consideration 
of these a conclusion was reached and the present text substan- 
tially adopted. I say substantially, because after the work on 
the separate portions had been finished there was a third revision 
of the work as a whole, touching various suggestions, both new 
and old, as to particular portions of difficulty or importance. 
This being submitted to the American Company, they proceeded 
to draw up a list of the passages in which they preferred a text 
or margin different from what had been adopted by the English 
brethren. This by no means includes all the points of difference 

between the two companies, but was limited to those 
Appendix which were deemed of sufficient magnitude to be 

included in an Appendix, for the American revisers 
were anxious to make this Appendix as small as possible. Its 
existence is no mean testimony to the earnestness and care with 
which the revision has been carried on. Nothing was neglected, 
nothing slighted.' 7 



THE WONDERFUL BOOK 53 

The committee agreed with great unanimity that the 
American committee should recognize the moral 
Copy- claim of copyright on the part of the English 

right Publishers, the Syndics of the University-presses 

of Oxford and Cambridge, and for fourteen years 
from the date of publication should abstain from issuing any 
edition of their own. On the other hand the differences of 
readings or of renderings which, in the view of the American 
Committee, were of special importance, should be inserted in an 
appendix to be attached to all English editions. The American 
committee gladly made the concessions, for the enterprise origina- 
ted in England and the University-presses, the authorized pub- 
lishers of the King James' Version in Great Britain, had paid the 
expenses of the British Committee amounting to $100,000. 

The most marked changes insisted on by the American 
Committee were: — 

1. Jehovah or God shall always be applied to that 
Differ- One who revealed himself to his people and entered 
ences into covenant relation with them. 

2. The transliteration of Sheol throughout the 
Old Testament. 

3. That archaisms be translated into modern grammatical 
forms. 

4. That marginal readings taken from the Septuagint or 
Vulgate be omitted. 

5. That certain words were incorrectly translated by the English 
committee. 

A comparison of the following passages in the two editions will 

show clearly the differences : — 

Gen. 18, 19. Ex. 1, 21. Lev. 16, 8. Num. 5, 21. Deut 3, 25. 



54 THE WONDERFUL BOOK 

Josh. 5, io. Judges 3, 20; 5, 26. Ruth 2, 10. 1 Sam. 2, 20. 11 Sam. 
5,2. 1 Kings 6, 6. 11 Kings 2, 23. iChron.9, 19. 11 Chron. 
26,3. Job. 1,8. Job. 2, 3. Job. 5, 25. Job. 21, 32. Ps 2, 1; 
38, 12 ; 5, 7 ; 9, 17 5 10, 14 ; 12, 2 ; 17, 7 5 21, 3 ; 22, 8 ; 52, 5 ; 59, 8 ; 
73, 10; 93, 1 ; 107, 30. Prov. 4, 8; Ecc. 3, 11 ; Isaiah 2, 4; 7, 21; 
9, 10 ; 27, 1 ; 28, 7 ; 29, 24 j 30, 1 5 32, 10 ; 33,4; 34, 8 ; 38, 12 ; 
41, 27 ; 42, 15 ; 43, 23 ; 46, 6 ; 52, 2 ; 53, 1 ; 54, 12 ; 60, 6 ; 61, 2 ; 
66, 5 ; Jeremiah 2, 25 ; 10, 24 ; 13, 12; 14, 12 ; 18, 17 ; 20, 7 ; 21, 5; 
23, 15 ; 31, 20; 38, 11 ; 41, 14 ; 46, 3 ; 48, 28 ; 50, 7 ; 5ii 34 Lam. 
1, 12 ; 2, 19 ; 4, 1 ; Ezek. 1,4; I3> 5 5 16, 7 ; 20, 3 ; 23, 8 ; 29, 5 ; 
38, 22 ; 43, 14 ; Daniel 91 25, and 26 ; Hosea 8, 11. Mich. 4, 13 ; 
Nahum i, 10 ; 2, 1 ; Zech. 3, 5 ; 4, 7 ; Mai. 33. 

The word " saint " is omitted from the gospels and the 
Revelation of John ; the word "Apostle " from the title of the 
Pauline Epistles; and " Paul the Apostle" from the Epistle to 
the Hebrews ; the word " General " from the title of the Epistles 
of James, Peter, John and Jude. These omissions are justified 
by the oldest manuscripts. The differences of translation in the 
New Testament are very numerous owing to the insistence of the 
American Committee in correcting innocent as well as misleading 
archaisms ; and the rejection of certain words which are obsolete 
in America but not in England. " British and American scholars 
are pretty generally agreed, that the American Revisers were 
nearer the meaning of the original languages than their British 
co-laborers." 

It is the judgment of our best scholars that the American 
Revised Version is superior to any edition of God's Word ever 
issued. This conclusion is reached from the following con- 
siderations : 

The spelling, punctuation and grammar are in harmony with 



THE WONDERFUL BOOK 55 

present standards ; the headings of chapters are attractive, yet 
free from dogmatic implications ; the paragraphing is good, and 
the arrangement of the text is more artistic than in any previous 
edition ; obsolete and misleading words are replaced by other and 
better words — modernized words ; the euphemisms make it pos- 
sible to read in public passages which hitherto offended good taste; 
the version is in closer conformity to the original languages 
because the translators had access to the oldest manuscripts, and 
were more finished scholars. 

Huxley said of the Authorized Version, " It is written in the 
noblest and purest English, and abounds in exquisite beauties of 
mere literary form." His verdict has been accepted by the literary 
world. It contains the best literature of thirty centuries ; warriors 
have fought for it, and martyrs have died for it. The greatest 
literary geniuses have stolen their genius from it It has sug- 
gested the loftiest thoughts, the sublimest poetry, and the sweet- 
est music that humanity has ever produced. No wonder our 
immortal statesman, U. S. Grant said, " Hold fast to the Bible 
as the sheet anchor to your liberties, write its precepts in your 
hearts and practise them in your lives. To the influence of this 
we are indebted for all progress made in our true civilization, 
and to this we must look as our guide in the future." The 
writer would not if he could weaken one tribute of honor that is 
woven into the coronal of praise that encircles the edition of 161 1, 
for it richly deserves them all, but in the years to come when 
people who speak English want God's Revelation in exact form 
and beautiful diction they will go instinctively to the Revised 
Version — American Standard Edition. 



56 THE WONDERFUL BOOK 



VI. 
HIGHER CRITICISM. 



The unrest in ecclesiastical circles regarding higher criti- 
cism comes, in the main, from a lack of information as to the 
scope and design of such investigation, and from the apparent 
eagerness of the public press to widely circulate every statement 
that would in any way militate against biblical inspiration. 

The sainted Stephen M. Merrill said : 

" It needs to be shown that higher criticism is not an " ism,'' 
and that it ought not to be allowed to become such. It is not an 
" ism " because it is not a creed or a doctrine, but a line or sphere 
of study or work. It has to do not with the doctrines or inter- 
pretations of the Bible, but with the books or documents making 
up the Bible. It inquires concerning the origin, history, author- 
ship, date, and perchance the literature of these books. This is 
its aim and its sphere, and who shall say that this field of work 
is not legitimate and important? It is not the conclusions one 
reaches or the opinions he forms with regard to any or all these 
books that constitute him a higher critic, but the fact that he 
enters this field and works in it. If he studies all the sources of 
information and comes out convinced, as many have done, that 



THE WONDERFUL BOOK 57 

Moses was, indeed, the author of the Pentateuch, and that the 
traditions of the Church concerning the several books are 
substantially correct, and holds fast to the common belief in 
inspiration and miracles, he is nevertheless a higher critic, as 
certainly so as if he had followed the eccentrics to a denial of all 
the Church holds dear. It is a great mistake to think of the 
eccentrics, the destructives, as the only higher critics, as it is 
also to take their conclusions as higher criticism. Their con- 
clusions are heresies, pure and simple, and should not be charged 
to the account of higher criticism as an art, or as a sphere of 
study, in any other sense than that it has been misused or 
abused, as has been almost every other line of study. Higher 
criticism is the critical study of the books of the Bible." 

This is in no sense a modern science ; schools of criticism 
flourished in the second and third century before Christ. Some 
of the masters in these schools were distinguished 
Result of for their great literary ability. Modern Biblical 
Atheistic criticism rose with the revival of learning in Europe, 
Teaching and was fathered by Richard Simon who was born 
in France in 1638. Two hundred years ago, in Eng- 
land, there were champions against the Bible who were the peers 
of the literary men of any age, Bolingbroke, Shaftsbury, Blount, 
Hume and others. The works of some of these men were 
issued in editions of 20,000, and in a few months reached the 
twelfth edition. These men were educated at Cambridge and 
Oxford. The teaching in these great schools at that time was 
such as to undermine faith in God and His Word. The destruc- 
tive Biblical criticism of today is not nearly so strong or so popu- 
lar as the deistical writings of these men of 150 and 200 years 
ago. Modern critics are simply threshing over the old straw- 



58 THE WONDERFUL BOOK 

It is strange how little they get that is new. That was a 
brilliant array of literary men who set to work to overthrow the 
Bible and to drive Christianity from the land. Hume and 
Bolingbroke were the moving spirits and Voltaire was the 
spokesman. As a result of their teaching France was plunged 
into Atheism, and the French Revolution followed. The Church 
in England was paralyzed because of concessions made to these 
deists by the leaders of religious thought. It is still true, as facts 
prove, that when a preacher becomes tinctured with these deistical 
ideas, the spiritual life of the people is paralyzed, and the 
church degenerates to a social organization or to a literary club. 
Under such conditions souls are not born into the kingdom, and 
it is well they are not, for to place a young convert amid such 
surroundings would be like throwing a new born babe into a 
snowdrift. So it has come to pass that what Atheists and 
Infidels did intentionally in undermining faith and Christian 
experience, some professors and ministers have done uninten- 
tionally. It is true that politics makesstrange bedfellows, and 
it is equally true of higher criticism. 

Because of the ignorance of many people as to the real 
issues involved, the unfortunate attitude of the public press, and 
the desire of some people to be heard, there has come to be great 
confusion in the public mind regarding the effect of higher 
criticism on fundamental Bible doctrine. 

The shortest road a preacher can take to notoriety is pro- 
nounced opposition to the plain teaching of scripture, but when 
he has once reached the point of being notorious the road is 
equally short to obscurity. One of these eratics recently said : 
"Whoever opposes the documentary hypothesis of the origin of 
the Pentateuch and favors the Mosaic authorship risks his 



THE WONDERFUL BOOK 59 

reputation for scholarship." The Ipse dixit of such critics 
would be amusing were it not for its absurdity. As one reads 
their claims he is often reminded of Job's retort to his false 
friends. He said, " No doubt but ye are the people, and wisdom 
shall die with you, but I have understanding as well as you.' ' 

The large number of people who are not in sympathy with 
.he Bible and with Christianity like adverse criticism, and they 
think or assume that the man who attacks the 
Legitimate Bible is a great scholar. It is humiliating to make 
Criticism the acknowledgment that some men in the ministry 
Welcomed and others in professors' chairs, have apparently 
sought this popular current to attain fame. Criti- 
cism has its legitimate place. 

This is a day of investigation ; the very foundations are 
being tried ; everything that is false must go ; scholars are not 
satisfied with old methods. The geologist with torch, pickaxe 
and spade has gone down into the bowels of the earth and is 
laying bare the rocky records of creation ; the astronomer has 
climbed the ladder of light and the higher he has gone the 
further he has seen— he has passed the light of, to us, invisible 
worlds, through the spectroscope and made them reveal their 
component elements and tell their secrets ; the historian is not 
satisfied with the book records of his childhood, but he is 
exhuming the buried cities of antiquity and reading history from 
clay tablets that were written upon in the morning of creation. 
As Christians what shall we say to these investigators? Bo 
we say, "Enter not the sacred precincts of religion— touch not 
the Holy Book 1 " No, a thousand times, No ! Everything that 
is false must go and the sooner the better. If the Bible is 
untrue we would know it now. We remember with pride that 



6o THE WONDERFUL BOOK 

these wreckers learned their trade at Christian altars. It was 
Christianity that broke the chains and let the light into the 
dark ages and made biblical criticism possible. We rejoice that 
nearly every book in the Bible has been subjected to fiery 
criticism, but we further rejoice that even the most extreme 
critics have suggested no change that would in any way affect a 
Bible doctrine. 

" We cannot go on affirming as facts anything which learn- 
ing discards as untrue, or which will not stand the test of 
sound criticism, whether the criticism be lower or higher. 
What we teach must have a substantial basis. Intelligence 
demands this. Theories will yield to facts, as they ought, and 
dogmas must turn to the light and take shape from the last 
manifestations of actual knowledge. There is no such thing as 
hiding the truth, or holding it forever from the people. It is by 
the manifestation of the truth that the true apostle commends 
himself to every man's conscience in sight of God. There is no 
possibility of honoring the Bible by shutting out any ray of 
light that can be thrown upon its pages. 

On the other hand, the Church cannot afford to accept as 
fact that which is only hypothesis, theory, or conjecture. We 
are often asked to do this, and the demand is urged with such 
vehemence and persistence that one needs vigilance and self- 
poise to resist the plausible pleadings of scholarly voices 
enlisted in this behalf. " 

The thing that we object to is for criticism to run mad and 
make claims that are contradicted by every principle of common 
sense. To illustrate we need but call attention to some of the 
claims these critics make regarding the Pentateuch and the 
proofs by which they try to sustain them. Voltaire insisted that 



THE WONDERFUL BOOK 61 

the Pentateuch was not written till 800 years after Moses. The 
claim was made that he did not live in a literary age. Toland says, 
" The books were written long after the events by some priest." 
Bolingbroke said : u The Pentateuch could not be from Moses. " 

Tom Paine said : " All the contradictions in time, place and 
circumstances that abound in the books ascribed to Moses prove 
to a demonstration that the books could not have been written 
by Moses or in the time of Moses." 

Ingersoll said: " Many years after Moses, the Pentateuch 

was written by many different persons, and to 

Deny give it force and authority it was ascribed to 

Authorship Moses. " The writers who attack the author- 

of Pentateuch ship also attack the character of the 

book. 

Voltaire says : " Genesis is one of the ancient fables current 
among the Jews." 

Paine says, " Genesis is an anonymous book of fables." 

Ingersoll said, " The story of the Tower of Babel is an 
ignorant and childish fable." 

These statements sound like deliverances which we some- 
times hear nowadays from Christian pulpits and professors' 
chairs. 

M In some way a large number of young men come out of 
the schools inclined to discredit the authority of much that is in 
the Bible. They speak lightly, if not sneeringly, of what 
experienced Christians hold sacred. There is wrong some- 
where. If teachers do not inculcate doubts, they do not succeed 
in removing them. The business of theological schools is to 
equip pupils to meet opposers of the faith, to send them forth 
sound and strong to battle for the Lord, armed with adequate 



62 THE WONDERFUL BOOK 

knowledge of the position and methods of the enemy, and cer- 
tainly disposed and ready to stand for the faith which the Church 
they are to serve holds in honor. Teachers of preachers cannot 
afford to fail in this, nor can they afford to be misunderstood. 
They are not restrained from teaching anything that is knowable 
in criticism of all grades. That which is required is that they 
abide by the facts discoverable, and if the realm of conjecture 
must be entered, that it be done without indulging in inferences 
tending to undermine foundation principles. Personal honor 
and loyalty to the Church demand this." 

Jean Astruc, a French infidel who lived one hundred and 
fifty years ago, exploited the documentary theory of the 
Pentateuch, or at least of Genesis — by distinguishing between 
the names of God — Elohim in some places and Yahwah in 
others. He never denied the Mosaic authorship of any part of 
the Pentateuch. This line of study has been applied to the 
Pentateuch and is generally spoken of by writers simply as the 
Documentary Theory. The documents are indicated by certain 
letters of the alphabet as follows : 

J. signifies one of the documents of the Pentateuch which 
uses the name Yawhah for God. 

E. signifies the document which uses the name Elohim for 
God. 

D. signifies the author of Deuteronomy. 

P. indicates the Priestly document. 

J. E. stands for the Jehovist document, which is a combina- 
tion of two documents that are dovetailed together, in one of 
which Yahwah is used for God, and in the other of which 
Elohim is used. 

Many critics have written long treatises to show where one 



1:he wonderful book 63 

document ends and another begins, and to settle, by certain 
literary peculiarities, the age of these documents. 
Learned Unfortunately these learned critics disagree among 
Critics w themselves, as to where one document begins and 
Disagree another ends, as well as to their dates. This is 
certainly a " crazy quilt " method of composition 
and does violence to every principle of common sense. The 
argument from literary style is equally defective. Professor 
Harmon has said : " Suppose some day there should be applied 
to American history the skeptical principles sometimes applied 
to the Bible, what havoc will be made of our history ! Let us 
take the following language from the Declaration of Indepen- 
dence, ' We hold these truths to be self-evident — that all men 
are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with 
inalienable rights 5 that among these are life, liberty and the 
pursuit of happiness.' Let it be borne in mind that when this 
language was used the African slave-trade was carried on not 
only in the South and by the Southern States, but also by 
Massachusetts and other New England States, and African 
slavery existed in about every state of the Confederacy. 7 ' 
What will the future critics of Germany say of this Declaration 
2000 years hence ? Will they not declare it is unhistorical ! 
They will say it is perfectly absurd that men should appeal to 
the Supreme Ruler of the Universe for the rectitude of their 
intentions, declaring that all men are created equal and entitled 
to liberty, while these very rebellious states themselves were 
enslaving human beings. The critic will assert that the Decla- 
ration arose in or was greatly modified by the age of freedom ! 
Take another instance of surprising character. " On Thomas 
Jefferson's monument stands the foregoing inscription : * Author 



64 THE WONDERFUL BOOK 

of the Declaration of American Independence, of the Statutes of 
Virginia for Religious Freedom, and Father of the University of 
Virginia,' not a word about his having been President of the 
United States ! What an omission ! Suppose this monument 
one or two thousand years hence should be dug up among the 
ruins of America and transported to Germany, what a sensation 
it would make ! Will they not straightway revise American 
history and affirm that the author of the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence and President Jefferson were two different persons, as 
established by monumental testimony." The fragmentary 
hypothesis seems highly improbable, for by such a method it 
would be next to impossible to produce a coherent work such as 
the Pentateuch. There are allusions and references from one 
part to another which render the fragmentary origin inconceiv- 
able. Elohim and Yahwah are used interchangeably not simply 
in the same, so-called documents, but in the same sentence (See 
Genesis 24, 3 : 28, 21). 

We have a right to demand better proof of the documentary 
theory than has yet been adduced before we abandon the tradi- 
tional theory. There are very few positive conclu- 
Better sions upon which the critics agree among them- 
Proof selves, and it seems hopeless to expect agreement in 

Needed the future, for the arguments of one school are 
ignored and even ridiculed by another. The statement is made 
fifty-six times in the book of Leviticus that Moses is the 
author. The universal tradition among the Jews was that 
Moses was the author of the Pentateuch. Josephus speaks of 
Moses as the author of the Pentateuch. 

Jesus and the Apostles regarded Moses as the author of the 
Pentateuch. Jesus quoted sixty-six times from the Pentateuch, 



THE WONDERFUL BOOK 65 

and forty times from the latter part of Isaian. He always 
referred to the Pentateuch as having been written by Moses, and 
to Isaiah as having been written by Isaiah. 

11 Accepting the judgment of the critics, we have before us 
two alternatives regarding Jesus : He was either ignorant of the 
facts, and hence taught error under a misapprehension, or else 
he knew the facts, and knowingly taught what was false, and 
thus helped to fasten a fraud and a lie upon His nation and His 
after Church. " When Jesus went to Jerusalem the people 
were astonished that he knew letters-gramma. The margin 
says " learning. " It is the same word that Festus used when 
he said to Paul, " Much learning doth make thee mad." If 
then, Jesus was possessed of " much learning," he was 
probably as competent to pass upon the authorship of the 
Pentateuch as any of the destructive critics. We cannot for a 
moment accept the view that when Jesus set his seal upon the 
Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch, he was either ignorant or 
untruthful. In the past few years the explorer and the 
archaeologist have settled many of the questions raised by the 
destructive critics. If any testimony deserves to be regarded as 
final it is the testimony of the spade. 

Critics have said the Pentateuch must have been written 
long after Moses, for it is the production of a literary age that 
had its birth hundreds of years later. But the archaeologist has 
brought to light facts which prove conclusively that Moses 
wrote late in Egypt's literary age. The Proverbs of Ptah-hotep 
though written more than five thousand years ago represent the 
close of a period in the history of Egyptian literature. 

Prof. Sayce says : " The Mosaic age, therefore, instead of 
being an illiterate one, was an age of high literary activity and 



66 THE WONDERFUL BOOK 

education cnroughout the civilized East. Not only was there a 
wide-spread literary culture in both Egypt and Babylon which 
had its roots in the remote past, but this culture was shared by 
Mesopotamia and Asia Minor, and more especially by Syria and 
Palestine. From one end of the ancient world to the other, men 
and women were reading and writing and corresponding with 
one another ; schools abounded and great libraries were formed 
in an age which the u critic " only a few years ago dogmatically 
declared was almost wholly illiterate. We have learned many 
things of late years from archaeology, but its chiefest lesson has 
been that the age of Moses, and even the age of Abraham, was 
almost as literary an age as our own." 

Only a few years ago the critics had much to say about the 
unhistorical character of the fourteenth chapter of Genesis, claim- 
ing that "the political situation presupposed by it was incredible 
and impossible; at so distant a date Babylonian armies could not 
have marched to Canaan, much less could Canaan have been a 
subject province of Babylon. " The excavator has dug up clay 
tablets and scholars have deciphered them, and read thereon an 
account of the Kings of Shinar and Elam making incursions 
into Canaan, that corresponds exactly with the account given in 
Genesis. These tablets may be seen by the hundreds in some of 
our Museums as well as in the Museum of Constantinople and 
the British Museum. That they date back to the time of Gene- 
sis, that their evidence is abundant, and their argument unan- 
swerable, the most foolhardy destructive critic will not deny. 

If the Bible be the Word of God there is no possible harm that 
can come to it as the result of criticism. It is an anvil on which 
many skeptics have broken their hammers. 

Many false prophets have predicted its annihilation but it was 



THE WONDERFUL BOOK 67 

never so much in evidence as now- That it has lived through 
the night of ignorance and superstition and grown in favor dur- 
ing the long night of criticism, proves that it deserves the high 
place it holds in the hearts and lives of the nation's greatest, 
best and holiest people. Our interpretation of the Bible will 
change as our horizon widens, for it is so divinely made that it 
develops as we advance in knowledge and christian grace. One 
must search deeply to realize the Bible is an inexhaustible store- 
house. When one has made such a search with both head and 
heart he has no fears regarding the results of criticism. 

A critic on the Sacred Book should be 

Candid and learned, dispassionate and free, 

Free from the wayward bias bigots feel, 

From fancy's influence and intemperate zeal. 

[ Cowper.] 

It is not built on disquisition vain, 

The things we must believe are few and plain. 

[Dryden.] 
The Bible-a stream, where alike the elephant may swim and 
the lamb may wade. 

[Gregory The Great.] 

God's Sacred Word is like the Lamp of Day 

Which softens wax, but makes obdurate the clay; 

It either melts the heart, or more obdures; 

It never falls in vain; it wounds or cures. 

[Francis Quarles.] 

Save for my daily range 

Among the pleasant fields of Holy Writ, 

I might despair. 

[Tennyson.] 



68 THE WONDERFUL BOOK 



VII. 

THE TRUTH OF THE BIBLE. 



In concluding this little treatise the writer will mention a 
few of the many reasons which have led him to accept the Bible 
as inspired of God. Isaiah, who lived 740 B.C., believed the law 
which he possessed to be the Word of God, for he said, " To the 
law and the testimony, if they speak not according to this word, 
it is because there is no light in them." 

It was probably never so necessary as now to say " back to 

God's Word." Many are trying to disbelieve the 

" Back Bible, and when they get it out of the way, it is 

to God's but a short step to the denial of God. The Psalmist 

Word." said that one who followed such a course was a fool, 

and took counsel of a wicked heart. 

General Culpepper was once lecturing in Richmond, Virginia, 
and remarked incidentally, that he could prove to an audience in 
ten minutes that any man who denied the truth of the Bible was 
either ignorant or a fool. A gentleman rose in the audience and 
claimed that he had been insulted by the remark, saying, " My 
neighbors know I am not ignorant, and they know, furthermore, 
that 1 have been fighting the Bible for the past fifteen years, and 
I assert in this presence that there is nothing in it." The Gene- 
ral quietly remarked, c< I will leave it to this audience if a man 



THE WONDERFUL BOOK 69 

who fights nothing for fifteen years does not act very much like 
a fool." 

1. The truth of the Bible is confirmed by secular history. 
One of the severest tests to which a narrative can be subjected is 
its incidental allusions. Studied statements can be guarded, but 
passing references are apt to betray falsehood where it exists. 
The passing allusions in the Bible to manners, customs and inci- 
dents are proving to be accurate. Every known line of investi- 
gation is being pursued to throw light on the nations that perished 
before the dawn of authentic history. Every discovery up to the 
present time has been confirmatory of both the statements and 
allusions found in the Bible. 

2. Recent archaeological explorations in Assyria have settled 
disputed questions in history which led many historians to deny 
certain Bible statements. One has said, " It seems that nearly 
every turn of the spade brought forth fresh evidence of the cor- 
rectness of the Bible history." 

God seems to have locked up these facts in the bowels of the 
earth, and reserved them for the purpose of silencing the criticism 
of this skeptical age. Skeptics have found fault with the state- 
ments of Daniel regarding the size of Babylon, but the explorers 
are finding facts that cause them to describe a city that dwarfs 
the Bible account of the size of Babylon. A recent publication 
describes the tower of Belus as 1600 feet high. 

The libraries ot Babylon and Nippur that have been exhumed 
Verification in the past ten years verify the Bible statements 
of Bible regarding the incursions of the Assyrians into Pal. 
Statements estine and the capture of the Northern Kingdom- 

What many regarded a few years ago as a myth is known 
now to be an historical fact* 



70 THE WONDERFUL BOOK 

3. A large part of the Bible is devoted to prophecy that time 
eventually changed into history. These prophecies stated what 
should happen to cities such as Tyre, Sidon, Ninevah, Babylon, 
Capernaum, Chorazin, Bethsaida and Jerusalem- As one views 
their ruins and remembers that what he sees was predicted thou- 
sands of years before, he realizes he is standing in the presence 
of the works of the Infinite. The Old Testament contains at least 
one hundred and fifty prophecies concerning Christ, where the 
reference is so plain that it cannot be misunderstood, that have 
been fulfilled by his life, death and resurrection. 

One has said that the best proof in existence of the truth of 
the Bible is the history of the Jews. 

How any person who is intelligent and honest can study 
prophecy and history, and then deny the truth of the Bible is a 
mystery to the writer. 

4. The discoveries of science confirm the Bible. The state- 
ments of Genesis were made by a twentieth century scientific man, 
or given by inspiration. With all the knowledge of the present it 
would be impossible to write a better or more up to date account of 
creation in the same number of words, than the account given in 
the first chapter of Genesis. The genera in the order of creation 
are scientifically correct, according to the testimony of those who 
are competent to judge. The order of the scientist is the same as 
the order in Genesis, viz : heaven, earth, water, light firmament, 
grass, herb, tree, heavenly bodies, fish, moving things, fowls, 
creeping things, cattle and man. How did the writer of Genesis 
get these things in scientific order? He must have known the 
facts that are familiar to the twentieth century scientist or have 
spoken by inspiration. He could not have gotten these in order 
as a mere guess, for the possible permutation of fifteen objects is 



THE WONDERFUL BOOK 71 

1,307,674,368,000. To believe the order came by a chance guess 
is a wonderful stretch of the imagination. 

5. The harmony of the Bible is proof of its divine origin and 
hence of its truth. One purpose runs through it from Genesis 
to Revelation producing harmony throughout just as in every 
British cable is one scarlet strand. Thij is inexplicable in any 
supposition other than its inspiration, when we remember that 
it was written by thirty-six different authors who were widely 
separated by time, language, place and customs— that it appeared 
in sixty-six separate books, during a period of sixteen centuries. 
These facts preclude the possibility of collusion among the writers, 
and shut us up to the conclusion that there must have been a 
superintending mind. The Bible asserts two thousand and eight 
times that it was written by God. 

It was not written by a good man for he would not 
Bible a lie, and a bad man would not write it for it condemns 
Wonderful his actions. No man could have written it for it is 
Book. a wonderful book. It does not read like any other 

book. When men write books they tell only the 
good their heroes do, but the Bible pictures human nature as it is, 
and tells the good and the bad. 

6. The Bible is inexhaustible in a sense that applies to no 
other book. It is not difficult to master the average book the 
size of the Bible, but who has ever mastered the contents of the 
Bible? The devout student, who has studied it all his life, is 
sure to feel he has only picked up a few pebbles on the shores of 
God's great ocean of truth. The masters of literature, poetry, 
philosophy and history find the Bible a perennial fountain. When 
one wishes to study the great questions pertaining to the life of 
the soul there is no other book. What other books contain that 



72 THE WONDERFUL BOOK 

is valuable on this subject is borrowed from the Bible. Daniel 
said, "Many shall run to and fro and knowledge shall be in- 
creased." The time spoken of has come and as knowledge in- 
creases the wonders of the Bible will unfold just as they are now 
doing in a wonderful way in the historic Mesopotamian Valley. 

7. A human life, indeed human history, is but an epitome, or 
a repetition, of the life that is pictured in the Bible. There is 

nothing that explains human life like the Bible. 
Man an Suppose you were to receive by express a box con- 
Enigma taining one hundred pieces of very intricate machin- 
ery which you were utterly unable to put together 
or understand, but a few days latter you were to receive by 
mail a book that contained illustrations and explanations of 
every piece, by aid of which you could put the machine together 
so that it worked perfectly ; while you might not be able to ex- 
plain all about either the machine or the book you would know 
they belonged together. 

Man is the intricate machine and the Bible is the book that 
puts him together. Without the explanation of the Bible man 
is an enigma, there is no solution of existence, but with the 
Bible light is thrown back along the corridors of time and down 
the vistas of the future. 

8. The Bible meets the expectation of Christian people and sat- 
isfies the people who believe and practice it; of course it does not 
satisfy the demands of unbelievers. 

As intelligent beings created by God and dependent on him, 
we have a right to expect a revelation from him. The Bible ful- 
fills that expectation by making the way of salvation plain and 
simple and by revealing nothing to satisfy vain curiosity. It Is 
perfectly adapted to all classes and conditions of society. It con- 



THE WONDERFUL BOOK 73 

tains profound thoughts with which intellectual giants majr 
wrestle, and comforting, helpful truths that just suit the weary, 
aching heart. The deeper we go into it along either of these 
lines the richer the ore. 

9. What the Bible does for those who accept it proves what 
it is. It reveals man to himself by finding him at his lowest 
depths, and raising him to his highest powers ; by transforming 
the natural man into the spiritual man, changing the sinner into 
the saint. The simple message of the Bible without any teacher, 
save the Holy Spirit, has changed savages into Christians. The 
light from the sacred page illumines the grave and makes the 
passage from this world joyful and happy. 

How precious is the Book divine, 

By inspiration given ! 
Bright as a lamp its doctrines shine, 

To guide our souls to heaven. 



BIBLE FACTS 



THE BIBLE CONTAINS 3,586,489 Letters. 

773,692 Words. 
31,173 Verses. 
1,189 Chapters. 
66 Books. 
THE OLD TESTAMENT, 39 Books 

Books of Law, 5: Gen ; Ex.; Lev.; Num.; Deut. 
Books of History 12: Josh ; Judg.; Ruth; 1 Sam.; 28am.; 

1 Kings; 2 Kings; 1 Chr.; 2 Chr.; Ez ; Neh.; Esther. 
Books of Poetry, 5: Job; Ps.; Prov.; Eccl.; S. S. 
Books of Prophecy; a. — Greater Prophets, 5: Is.; Jer.; Sam. 
Ezek.; Dan. 
b.— Lessr Prophets, 12: Hos.; Joel; Amos; Obad.; Jonah; 
Mic; Nah.; Hab.; Zeph.; Hag.; Zech.; Mai. 
THE NEW TESTAMENT 27 Books 

Books of History, 5: Matt.; Mark; Luke; John; Acts. 
Pauline Epistles, 14: Rom.; 1 Cor ; 2 Cor.; Gal.; Eph.; 
Philip.; Col.; iThess.; 2 Thess.; 1 Tim.; 2 Tim.: Tit.; 
Phile.; Heb. 
General Epistles, 7: Jas.; 1 Pet; 2 Pet; 1 John; 2 John; 

3 John; Jude. 
Book of Prophecy, Is Revelation. 
The word " Rev." occurs but once, Ps. in: 9. 
The middle verse is 8th of 118th Psalm. 
Ezra 7:21, contains all of Alphabet except c j.' 
Acts 26th chapter is the finest to read. 
2 Kings 19 and Isaiah 37 are alike. 
Esther 8 :g, is the longest verse. 
St. John 11:35, is the shortest verse. 
Verses 8, 15 and 31 of 107th Psalm are alike. 
Each verse of 136th Psalm ends alike. 
There are no words or names of more than six syllables. 
For further information study your Bible. 



NOY 27 19 



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